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Escaping Syria to marry

This self-appointed council of judges, lawyers and clerics started working four months ago. Judging by the line of supplicants waiting in the halls, residents appear to have granted this court

some degree of popular legitimacy.

In rooms marked "Civil Court" and "Personal Affairs Court," legal workers on a recent day issued birth and death certificates, signed divorce papers and listened to lawyers plead their clients' cases in a family property dispute.

Gayed is a former appeals court judge who defected from the Syrian government and now serves as the general prosecutor for the United Courts Council. He sat in an office, signing legal documents and stamping them with the council's seal, oblivious to thunderous explosions echoing outside.

"We have a deteriorating humanitarian situation," he added. "We came to work to stop people like the Free Syrian Army or others from taking advantage of the weak and to maintain law and order inside liberated areas." The Free Syrian Army is the main rebel force fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Even a temporary judicial system requires some system of detention and punishment.

The council has about 100 prisoners detained in a series of makeshift jail cells in a basement that resembles a dungeon.

In the "military prison," a court founded by rebels has incarcerated rebels accused of committing war crimes.

During a visit by CNN journalists, more than a dozen men sat on mats in a cavernous room.

Some of the inmates said they were there on charges of robbery and theft.

Others, like a bearded fighter who called himself Abu Younus, were being investigated for leading men into a battle that resulted in the friendly fire deaths of many fellow rebels. Abu Younus made an emotional plea, declaring his innocence.

"God, you know that I am innocent," he bellowed, raising hands and face to the ceiling. "Please god reveal the truth."

Another jailed rebel, who asked not to be named, said, "I am a member of the Free Syrian Army and the captain of a battalion. I tortured a shabiha" -- a pro-government militia-man -- "and he died three days later.

"I turned myself in. And now I'm waiting for the law to take its course ... in this failure of a court."

The jailed rebels were being held in the same prison cell with several captured loyalist soldiers. Men who could have been trying to kill each other on the battlefield weeks ago slept side by side on the floor and shared prison food.

The conditions in the basement prison were grim, dark and cold. Yet at first glance, inmates there appeared to be treated better than at another makeshift rebel jail CNN visited in northern Syria last August.

There, CNN saw more than 40 prisoners being held at a time in a single, over-crowded room. Some of those detainees, especially members of the shabiha militia, showed obvious signs of torture.

At the United Courts Council jail in Aleppo, the prison warden led visitors to another cell, where men sat with their backs to the walls under heavy blankets. Some read books. One inmate read a newspaper.

"This section is for shabiha, informants, collaborators, spies and homosexuals," said the warden, who asked to be named only Abu Abdo.

Abu Abdo, a former officer from Syria's foreign security service, insisted he was trying to reform rather than punish the prisoners by giving them regular lessons in Islam.

In fact, one of the judges explained that he and his colleagues are following a "Unified Arab Criminal Code" adopted by the Arab League, which is rooted in Islamic law.

But a visit to the office of Gayed, the council's prosecutor, revealed political tension between rival rebel groups.

The suavely dressed former judge had a half dozen guests seated around his desk, most of whom were lawyers hoping to set up a similar court in the opposition-held northern town of Maraa.

There was also a stocky, bearded man dressed in a camouflage uniform who quickly excused himself after journalists entered the room.

"The man was here from Jabhat al-Nusra," Gayed explained after the man left. "He was asking me to hand over a prisoner to his court system. I said no."

Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front, is a well-organized Islamist fighting group. The U.S. government recently black-listed the group, accusing of it being a terrorist organization.

"We black-listed the Nusra Front because of its intimate links with al Qaeda in Iraq," said Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, in an interview with CNN in Turkey.

"Nusra has a sectarian agenda ... (it) is anti-democratic and will seek to impose its very strict interpretation of Islam on Syria," Ford said.

But Gayed, asked about al-Nusra, called its members "our brothers in the revolution. They bleed for it. But we differ on how to build the state."

"We are calling for a civil democratic nation. They call for an Islamic state," he said. "The U.S. and the European Union didn't help us, and that created an increase in Islamic radicalism. ...

"Up until now we can control the situation," Gayed warned. "But later on, we may not be able to contain it."

Gayed argued his council's experiment in rebel justice is a more tolerant alternative to the Islamic courts that Nusra Front has reportedly been establishing in Aleppo and in other rebel controlled towns.

The United Courts Council is working to expand its law-and-order model to other communities in the largely rebel-held north.

It is a desperate strategy, council members admitted, aimed at preventing Syria from descending further into chaos